Brigid Buckley DairyNZ Developer - Sustainability

The concept of increasing farm profitability by becoming skilled at harnessing nutrients and sending them out the gate in milk is not new.

Assessing nutrient use and finding ways to become more efficient is something many farmers have been doing over a long period of time. New regional indicators of nutrient use should make this a clearer and easier process.

Knowing how much nitrogen is leached and phosphorus is lost from a farm system and how the system responds to reducing nutrient losses, is also increasingly important with the attention regulators are placing on this area of dairy farming.

The indicators of nutrient performance have been developed by DairyNZ and FertResearch to help you look for areas to make efficiency gains and lower nutrient losses from your milking platform.

Effluent indicators
You can't see efficient nutrient use or nutrient losses in the paddock. These indicators should help get around that by letting you check how you are performing compared to other farmers in your region.
There are specific regional indicators for the Waikato, Bay of Plenty and Central Plateau as well as for nine other dairy regions around the country.

In each of the regions there are three indicators of nutrient use so you can compare your farm with others in your region.

Nitrogen conversion efficiency is an indication of a farm's efficiency at converting external nitrogen inputs, such as supplementary feed and fertiliser, into nitrogen in products such as milk and meat.
Nitrogen leaching (kg N/ha/year) is an estimate of the nitrogen lost (leached) in drainage water below the plant's root system.
Phosphorus loss (kg P/ha/year) is an estimate of the amount of phosphorus lost from the farm system via surface runoff.
Each of these indicators are broken down into a regional distribution of farm performance.

Region comparison
When you come to assess your performance you can then ask how your farm compares to other farms that face similar challenges to yours – whether that's the geography, predominant soil type or the vagaries of the season. There's more value in that than comparing your farm performance to a national overview figure for each of the indicators.

The indicators are available at www.dairynz.co.nz/nutrientindicators. Starting in December, DairyNZ farm systems discussion groups will also cover the indicators.

Consulting officers will discuss how the region measures up and the groups will work through strategies that could lift the host farm's performance. This process should also help you when you meet with your fertiliser representative and farm advisor so you can assess strategies you plan to take and record them in your nutrient management plan.

The regional indicators should make it easier to identify your opportunities to increase the productivity and profitability of your business so you can discuss your options with your fertiliser representative and your farm advisors.

For more information visit www.dairynz.co.nz/nutrientindicators or contact Brigid Buckley on 0800 4 DAIRYNZ (0800 4 324 7969).